Kokro bite - Weekend at the Beach

In Ghana, $50 covers a weekend at a Beach Resort. $3 for travel, $6 a night per person for lodging, $3-4 a meal for food, and a few left over for souvenirs. Not a bad gig!

Last weekend we left our village to just get away for a few days. The week prior several of the girls had gotten sick, Bryan was diagnosed (and recovered from, easily) Malaria, and emotions were running a bit high. The beach cured most of us. Kokro Bite, a small beach resort where you can take dance and drum lessons, play beach soccer endlessly, and challenge travelers from Ghana, England, and Holland to table tennis matches, was quite the spot.

The highlights of the beach are the fishing boats, barefoot games of soccer, the music, and the food. Scrambled eggs never tasted so good as they did on Sunday morning. The picture below is of one of the 2v2 matches I took part in. The little man on the right, Jodwenta, was my teammate.

The only stain on the team's weekend was money that went missing (theft suspected, unfortunately) and a girl's BlackBerry that got washed up with one of the high waves. Unfortunately those aren't waterproof yet.

Still, as the pictures show, it was a great time with lots of smiles and relaxation in a more hospitable area. A fantastic retreat.

The Tro-Tro

Want to lose weight? Find a fiance? Maybe just travel for cheap? You can do all of this and more on a simple ride on a Tro-Tro, the Astro-van-styled vehicles that dominate the public transportation scene.

Tro-Tros are privately owned shuttle vans driven down the poorly built roads of Ghana by a young man, usually between the age of 20 and 40. I haven't been able to find the life-expectancy of these drivers documented anywhere, but I would expect it is quite a bit below the national average of 59, due to the cruising speeds, road conditions, and other drivers. Some Tro-Tros have predefined routes that the drivers cruise, picking up passengers along the way. Others drive around at random, yelling "bra! bra!" (come! come!) as the locals walk by. Each driver is accompanied by a younger "mate" who collects the fares, recruits passengers, and keeps order in the overpacked vehicle, sometimes while literally hanging out the sliding side door. (We suspect the mate's life expectancy is much lower than that of the driver.)

Losing weight on the Tro-Tro happens, whether you like it or not. Mostly water-weight lost through sweat, as the vans pack in as many human beings as possible as they cruise the roads. When full, most Tro-Tros pack 24 into their vans (driver plus two on the front bench, five rows of four passengers, and the mate). But it's a bad idea to attempt to estimate the mate's idea of the van's capacity; on one trip from Accra to nearby Nsawam, our van packed almost 34, by my count. But with others laying on your arm, sitting on your lap, yelling passionately, or maybe all three while trying to breast-feed, it's hard not to shed a few pounds.

Getting engaged is a bit more rare, and I've yet to see it happen. However, I have witnessed several of the girls on our team be proposed to while cruising the pot-holed dirt roads. The romantics usually get right to the point: "Marry me, white girl, and take me to your country!" Any takers?

Travelling for cheap is by far the best takeaway of taking the Tro-Tro. Our 2-hour trek to the capital city, Accra, costs just 2 cedi ($1.40) a person. Soon - perhaps after another post - I'll depart this internet cafe to find a Tro-Tro that will take me back to my village, 20 minutes away, for 70 Pesewas (less than $0.50). Wish me luck!

Kwabena the 1st Grade Teacher

In America a lot of fuss is made about backpacks. Are they too heavy or awkward for our kids? Will they cause back problems later? Are children carrying too many books to and from school?

In Ghana nobody asks those questions. Instead, each morning every student in Marfokrom's primary school carries a stool on their head to and from school. Stacked on the stool, they often carry bread, drinking water, breakfast, or whatever else may be of use to the teacher or class. After waking up, they make a few trips to and from the well (80 lb. water jugs are also carried on their noggins), help mom with whatever else is needed, bathe quickly, throw on their blue school uniforms, and finally mount their stools to head off to school.


On this day they were reintroduced to their new 1st grade teacher, Kwabena. I had been out of commission since last Friday because of illnesses among my 'brothers and sisters' (six of our team members got grossly sick Sunday night, one with malaria, others with suspected food poisoning) and yesterday's Republic Day celebrations, Ghana's Independence Day. But today I returned to action, teaching and playing from 8am - 1pm.

Teaching is hard work. Maybe the understatement of the century. After 3o minutes of teaching English words (cow, cup, spoon, goat, etc.) to the kids from a book provided by World Vision, I looked at my watch and thought the day should have been over. But we were just getting started. We worked on English words, spelling, sounds, the alphabet, and ended with a review game before our 45 minute recess of soccer and 'waakye' (beans and rice).

Next was math, where we worked on basic subtraction until Kwabena lost complete control of the room. In a very poorly thought out attempt to restore attention, control, and order to the chaos, I took a bottle of bubbles out of my pocket. I regained the attention of the children, only to watch control and order dive completely off the deep end. The real teacher returned and laughed at the sight of 30+ schoolchildren crowded around the 'obruni' (white man) who wielded bubbles in his left hand and chalk in his right. Using his whip, the teacher reinstated order to the room through intimidation pretty quickly, and hijacked the remaining 30 minutes from my control.

Lots more to discuss about the school, but the pictures speak volumes about the learning conditions. Pens, pencils, paper, and chalk are all in short supply. The children are eager to learn, but lack access to resources that will enhance the quality of their education.

The lesson here is simple: instead of complaining about whether the Jansport or Nike book-bag supports the back best, we should first remember to be grateful that we are to be able to have books to fill a bag with at all. And when you get a minute, try balancing a stool on your head, too. It's harder than it looks!

This last picture was taken by one of the eight year old students, Adjowah. Few things are better than making a child smile. And between bubbles and a digital camera, this is not a difficult task.